The Confidence vs The Con

07/10/2010

Its been an interesting past couple of months. If you picked up any newspaper that had been stringently supporting the Coalition for its bid to lead the country, you would have read the doom predicted for this country. The Coalition lapped it up and pointed to the headlines throughout the campaign.

BEWARE!!! They announced loudly! The ALP was overspending. The ALP was going to force interest rates to rise! The ALP was going to cause jobs to be lost!

I for one was frightened. I mean who wouldn’t be! There you had the same claims in the newspapers by economic experts. Coincidently, these were same experts that failed to predict the GFC. Still that could have happened to anybody right? So we gave them the Aussie fair go.

It was hard to tell at one stage who was leading the debate. Was it coming from the Coalition or the media? Was the media experts predicting the disaster or was the Coalition? And why on earth was Andrew Robb and Joe Hockey smiling when they predicted bad news for the country?

The election came. The election wait. The dollar rose. And rose. And rose.

The Coalition was still predicting doom and gloom! Now they were predicting that the communists were coming! That the Greens would destroy our lifestyle and our businesses. The papers followed their lead like bleating sheep in an echo filled canyon.

Look at the energy prices they announced! Look at the inflation in cost of living! But don’t look at the bonuses the heads of the energy companies are making!!!

Carbon pricing will be the doom of us sayeth Tony Abbott! Apparently our electricity prices will be going through the roof if we do.

The Grattan Institute begged to differ. Roughly they figure, based on a $40 carbon price, we will maybe raise your energy bills by $200 a year. Less if you use greener alternatives. And isn’t that the whole idea? To move to greener alternatives? But what about grocery prices? Well you would be looking at under 1 cent per litre of Milk.

Ohh!!! Scary!!! The cost of under 1% increase on prices to ensure the planet will be around for our descendants.

Still they opposition (because that is what they became again after the independents turned their backs on them) tried to shrill some more!

And all the while the Aussie dollar rose. And rose.

The day came for the RBA to decide on interest rates. Joe was all smiles in the morning. He was sure the interest rates were on the rise. He had read it in the papers. All the experts had listened to what he had to say or was that the other way around? The experts, the same ones that had trouble with seeing the GFC coming, were pretty sure they could see the interest rate coming.

The hour came. The RBA did not raise the rates. Joe’s smile disappeared. The experts shifted tack. Apparently we are going to get a rise later. You watch they said. The dollar dipped. Look they cried! See! The dollar is dipping so we must be right! The went off to bed.

The next day, the dollar was rising again. And rising. And rising.

The day after that the job figures were to come out. Most of the experts, including the same ones that are still on those high salaries despite getting the GFC wrong and the interest rates rise wrong, predicted that at most, we would be seeing 20,000 jobs for September. Joe rubbed his hands with glee. Today was his day at last! He could talk about how the ALP are overspending and making the job of business and small business a nightmare. How the country needed industrial reform now.

The figures came out. Joe’s smile vanished. Instead of the predicted 20,000 jobs, 50,000 were created. And most of them full-time. So much for business being constrained.

And the dollar rose. And rose.

As I write this the dollar is trading at 0.99c US.

The IMF warn that the Aussie dollar is overvalued. They maybe right. After all they are experts and they too could not predict the GFC.

When the government priced its cost of the NBN it was at the time the dollar was below 83 cents US. A 16 cent rise would certainly drop the price of the project by a few billion here and there.

The other thing that will drop is Australia’s debt. Remember that? The Coalition made a big deal of that throughout the election campaign and even up till a decision was made of who was to form government. Now we don’t hear them say a thing about it.

There has been a confidence trick being played on us by the Coalition. Well you can’t really blame them as they got their information from those experts. You remember? The ones who unsuccessfully predicted the GFC. Anyway, the Coalition was sure doom and gloom was a coming. And boy that put a smile on their faces.

We did not fall for the confidence trick. We found our confidence.

We know that the future is in our hands. We know that what we do today affects the tomorrows of our children. We know we no longer have to tug on apron strings. We know this is our coming of age. We know it may not be easy. We know there will be ups and downs as that is a part of life.

But most importantly, we know that we can do this thing.

We know we can build that NBN. We know we can manage our water systems and help bring prosperity to our indigenous brothers and sisters. We know we can help build our regional communities. We know.

Now the dollar may rise and fall. Jobs may come and go. Prices may fluctuate. We know all that. And we are prepared to face what may come.

Because for the first time in a long time, not only do WE know who we are; the world is getting to know that too.

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Well said Ash, this style of message needs rebroadcasting every day WAKE up abc, if you do my capitals will return, stop following in the wake of murdoch’s flagship become the tug with them in your wake otherwise we will all be attending your wake Irish style tears and beers.